Hmm. That’s a pretty old version of the boot code. In any case, I needed to reset the switch to factory in order to clear the admin password. Once the switch finished booting I went on to see what’s it running.

Eek! That’s a pretty old version of the SFTOS firmware. In fact it’s one of the first, if not the first release for the S50. Really need to upgrade it to something a bit more recent. This actually turned out to be much bigger deal than I anticipated. Force10 site seems to be of no help trying to find an updated firmware for this box. After a LOT of Googling, I finally stumbled upon a 2.5.1 .bin file on an IBM ftp site. That’s the only image I have found after hours of searching. While not the latest version it sure is a big step up from the current 2.1.4 SFTOS.

Of course there was no way for me to verify that this image is in fact legitimate, and there was a high risk of bricking the switch if the image wasn’t up to par. But I decided to risk it and go ahead with the upgrade.

First thing’s first. Need to configure networking on the switch in order to TFTP the bin file to it from my workstation. The config process is quite different in 2.1.4 than in 2.5.3 but after a bit of research, I found the proper commands.

The copying process took only a few seconds. Took a few minutes to store the File in Flash. Now for the main part. Reboot the switch and hope that the new image will take. At the end of this either the switch will work or it’ll be an expensive paper weight.

The switch was formatting for quite a long time. After a while I was pretty sure the switch was hosed, but decided to stick it out and see if it comes back. Sure enough, few more minutes later the rest of the upgrade process completed.